Czech-born German-speaking writer whose posthumously published novels express the alienation of 20th century man. Kafka's nightmares of dehumanization, bureaucratic labyrinths, and totalitarian society have much in common with the works of George Orwell?. Jorge Luis Borges has noted, that Zeno's paradox against motion and the arrow and Achilles are the first Kafkaesque characters in literature.

First chapter of TFA:
Was it Kafka who learned about America by reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin... Kafka who said, "I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic."

Franz Kafka - AMERIKA
In 1913, when Kafka began work on his unfinished novel, AMERIKA, he had never traveled outside of Prague, had no American friends at all, and understood very little English. When asked what he knows about America, he replied, "I know the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and I always admired Walt Whitman, and I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic."

Franz Kafka, born in Prague, Bohemia (then belonging to Austria). The works of Kafka have since been recognized as symbolizing modern man's anxiety-ridden and grotesque alienation in an unintelligible, hostile, or indifferent world.

Kafka's Hat (Lay the Marble Tea)
With the rain falling surgically against the roof, I ate a dish of ice cream that looked like Kafka's hat.
It was a dish of ice cream tasting like an operating table with the patient staring up at the ceiling.